“And you thought I’d have tea and cookies waiting? I assumed you’d leave my phone on the hall table. Believe it or not, I wasn’t keen to see you. Please stay to finish your coffee, Dino. Gracias.” She stood to gather her things, determined to end this by separating herself from Paolo swiftly and cleanly. “You’re creating a jam,” she pointed out. People were looking and she’d never been comfortable at the center of attention.
“Why didn’t you use the car in the garage?” He took her bags with proprietary ease, leaving her scrambling to hang on to her purse at least.
“I felt like walking, but it was cooler than I expected. Hence the new hat.”
“If you’d taken the car, I would have known you were shopping and wouldn’t have run through the house like a madman, yelling for you. Don’t do that again, Lauren.”
To cover how disturbed she was by that revelation, she snorted, “When would I have occasion to? After this we really are never going to see each other again.” She meant it. Keeping Ryan’s secret and making her feel a fool was unforgivable.
He said nothing as he stowed her bags in the space behind the driver’s seat.
Rather than argue, she said haughtily, “Leave everything on the front step,” and started to turn away. This was painful enough, hating him while still reacting to every little flex and shift of his powerful body.
“Get in the car, Lauren.”
“I prefer to walk,” she told him, using a cutting stare to drive home to him that she would die before she’d go anywhere with him.
“Do you want me to put you in it?” He pushed his seat into place with a sharp click and a meaningful gather of his muscled frame.
“You wouldn’t. Not here,” she scoffed with a little smile and shake of her head. A car crawled past, honking repeatedly.
“I will,” he assured her. It wasn’t so much his tone that gave her pause, despite it being very severe. It was the inferno of cold heat in his eyes, a maelstrom beneath his calm demeanor.
Her heart skipped a beat. She wasn’t afraid of him, but for a second she was afraid of it. The energy. The source of his anger. It was an unknown force, but it felt very personal.#p#????#e#
To combat it, she reminded herself he was a liar. He had held her in contempt for sleeping with him so soon after Ryan’s death while fully aware that Ryan had been cheating all along. As her indignant fury soaked back into their staring contest, the spark of rebellion in her expanded to an inferno.
“Go for it,” she goaded, and returned to the café and Dino’s watchful curiosity.
Never in a million years would she have believed Paolo would do it, but athletic arms gathered her up faster than a parent caught a runaway toddler. The sudden grab startled her into letting out a yelp that turned into a string of angry protests as she wriggled in the cradle hold that pinned her to his chest.
He was beyond impervious. And strong. Amazingly strong since she was not only tall, but she’d started putting on baby pounds.
None of that made an impact and despite her struggles, he wasn’t the least bit rough. He carried her around to the passenger side like she was a case of crystal tableware, prone to breakage.
Why that made her feel secure, she had no idea, but for all the horrid embarrassment of being manhandled in public like this, there was a component of sweetness. She loved being close to him again. Feeling the ripple of his flexing muscles made her go weak with anticipation...
That would be embarrassing. She began to struggle more earnestly, but he didn’t set her on her feet until he needed to free one hand to open the car door.
She glared at him, flushed and hot. Shaking off his grip on her arm, she said, “You made my hat fall off!”
“Get in or I’ll run over your damned hat.”
He would. She could see he was in just that sort of rancorous mood.
Fuming, she plopped into the car and buckled up, watching as he circled the car, snatched up her hat, then threw it across to her as he climbed behind the wheel.
“What is wrong with you?” she muttered as she gently pinched the felt brim back into shape.
“You are wrong with me,” he bit out, squealing his tires as he peeled away like they were leaving a bank robbery. “I haven’t behaved so outrageously in years, but you had to throw down the gauntlet, didn’t you?”
“You didn’t have to pick it up!”
“I was worried about you,” he near shouted. “You fainted two days ago, in case you’ve forgotten. I thought I’d find you facedown in the pool. Instead you were flirting with some transient. I wasn’t about to leave you to make your own way home and not know if you made it. What if he followed you?”